1 The Secret Life Of Pets (U)
(Chris Renaud, Yarrow Cheney, 2016, US) 91 mins.
The makers of Despicable Me + cute animals doing funny things behind their owners’ backs = box-office catnip. There are echoes of Toy Story once we home in on a loyal house-trained mutt and his shaggy new rival, ejected from their domestic comfort zone on to the streets of New York. But even if the plot breaks little new ground, there’s invention, heart and meme-friendly gags to recommend.
2 Tale Of Tales (15)
(Matteo Garrone, 2015, Ita/Fra/UK) 134 mins.
Working from 17th-century Italian texts, Garrone crafts a beguilingly bizarre collection of grown-up fairytales, full of medieval monsters, perverse magic, courtly cruelty and European bawdiness. An international cast – including Salma Hayek, Vincent Cassel and John C Reilly – helps it along.
3 Remainder (15)
(Omer Fast, 2015, UK, Ger) 103 mins.
You could be scratching your head along with the traumatised protagonist of this amnesiac mystery-thriller, but in a good way. Having suffered a brain injury and received millions in compensation, a London man (Tom Sturridge) restages key scenes from his past, leading him down a Möbius-strip memory lane akin to that of Memento or Synecdoche, New York.
4 Embrace Of The Serpent (12A)
(Ciro Guerra, 2015, Col/Ven/Arg) 122 mins.
Western and Amazonian sensibilities collide as a shaman takes two separate expeditions upriver, into the jungle and his own lost tribal memories. The lucid, monochrome images and mesmerising mysticism create a bracing one-off.
5 Cemetery Of Splendour (12A)
(Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2015, Thai/UK/Ger/Fra/Mal/S Kor/Mex/US/Nor)
121 mins.
Thailand’s singular auteur weaves another languorous spell: a story of soldiers stricken by a mystery sleeping sickness. Psychic nurses, present politics, Laotian goddesses and everyday hospital life – in Weerasethakul’s hands, it all feels perfectly natural.
